4 Agency and Its Limits: African Unionists as Africa’s “Vanguard” at the FDGB College in Bernau

Abstract

On January 30, 1961, Werner Raase’s term of office ended abruptly. Raase had served as the first director of the Institut für Ausländerstudium (Institute for Foreign Students), the most recent institution added to the East German trade union college, the Hochschule der Deutschen Gewerkschaften “Fritz Heckert” in Bernau near Berlin. Only one day earlier, the responsible federal executive of the central trade union federation which ran the college, the Freie Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund (FDGB), had decided to dismiss four persons: Raase and his deputy, a teacher and an interpreter.2 The FDGB executive criticized not only the theoretical and didactic shortcomings in the teaching of state-socialist Marxism-Leninism, for which Raase was held responsible. The decision to dismiss him was also based on an intervention by 17 African students, whose request for a talk led high-ranked members of the Abteilung Internationale Verbindungen (International Relations Department) of the federal executive to travel to Bernau.3 The accusations subsequently collected were serious. In addition to the criticism of insufficient “political leadership” of the institute’s directorate,4 the second major point of critique were racist statements made by Raase and other teachers. For example,